Joe Rogan Experience #1564 — Adam Alter Transcript

Transcript

0:00 the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day right? This is a time when we're being forced to physically distance ourselves from other people. the stuff that brings us value, that makes it possible to connect to people. You know, It's so difficult to get away. But like a writer who's trying to get work done, What was the reason?

4:10 and I spent six hours playing this game so that by the time we landed, it, to try to get a sense of what I know, what I think of as the biggest, the single biggest change in the more deeply. Which was the game that you wrote about where the, the maker of the game, but the guy was making and killing. And, killing. And rare in this industry, and I think

6:45 incredibly simple to play. Everything about it was incredibly straightforward. The thing about Flappy Bird is the bird, when he crashes, he just automatically reanimates and he starts flying again. And it almost feels rude to the bird at that point to say, I'm not going to keep you short circuit one of the things that pushes people away from what they're doing onto the next

8:48 that's one of the features that people find uniquely addictive about TikTok Yeah, it's true on most of the video playing platforms now. to being deeply immersed in it as quickly as possible. don't tell you that it's time to move on. There's no sense of daylight. You know, it could be the That's how addicted people are. with it and they they talk about um you know this one guy was like i've lost all my friends

11:43 That makes no sense at all. And one day I just shut it off. It's a 3D experience. The sound is 3D. And it's a game that is uniquely addictive because it's so immersive. It's a 3D experience. And based on the numbers, yeah, based on just the numbers of players, it's not at its peak anymore. It's been eclipsed by some other experiences. But at its peak, I mean, it had

13:41 But there's also been a big shift in the way we play and who plays video games. It's a big change. technology increasing rapidly does i mean do you anticipate us being in the matrix in your lifetime they'll tell you, you know, we're only a couple of years away from this being a huge commercial living in our own little universes eventually if things go the way they've been going.

16:53 importantly separates you even more from the human experience of touching and being around each other life in the last decade in particular Just that. People would say this is, yeah, it's nonsense. I would rather just use the most remote form of communication possible. Whatever's easiest. I don't want to have to speak on the phone. I don't want to have to see

19:05 there's plenty of folks that are happy to just get lulled to sleep and sucked into it. And I think I think the minority, the majority are embracing it. Yeah. I think, I think minority that's rejecting it. I think the majority are embracing it. ever right now because this is a hard time for a lot of people. It's hard financially. It's hard because you're

21:15 It's funny. When I was doing the research for this book, I spoke to a game designer, It's just not something I want to do. sense because they're ghosts. But you fly around with one of the little Ghostbusters guns and Are you aware of Sandbox? you you see it and you go i see where this is going like this is right now pretty immersive There's one of them where you're in a haunted house,

24:02 like you're getting torn apart. And in this video game, And that's what everyone's terrified of. It was just, there was a level of excitement. And, and you know you used to have to kind of suspend disbelief like you as you say with doom you'd have the pixels and you'd be like yeah it's not quite seem to be worried at all and you know obviously he makes games and he's working with oculus he

26:41 I can't remember. You know, he's like swinging his arms back and forth through the air. uh, they're in engineering now with omnidirectional treadmills. And I don't think that makes sense. that's got to have some beneficial effects. want to try to do that across the population. Find the stuff that's damaging, weed it out, but while it's addictive, you're also getting in shape

30:48 apart from each other, we are able to actually communicate through these screens in a way that's in tribes. They've had to come together. They've relied on each other. They've formed coalitions. another kid's toy, the kid's going to bop you on the head and say, that's not okay. You've got to to access information. real simple that just you know goes under your skin in a very easy way and

34:29 I've been asking this question of thousands of people. people, there's going to be this little device device and people are going to be willing to have body parts broken You look forward. And this is one of the really important reasons, I think, for thinking so carefully about this stuff. agree with everything you're saying and i bet this is going to resonate well all the people that are

37:27 and if they don't know, they'll collect data going to depend on, on, uh, I think two things, you know, there are kind of top down influences care about this issue. And now it's many, many millions, maybe even billions of people who are So your inbox, the way it looked the day you went on vacation, does not change until you get back from your vacation. So you don't need to check it

39:42 So we're going to have to do something from the top down, which is how a lot of governments deal with drug issues. They go to the source. left. company's going to the top, you're not going to allow that. But in America, in competitive business practices, Yeah, I don't believe they should do that. up and say look I need help I'm addicted to screens I'm spending 12 hours a day on them

42:38 I've been thinking about it for six years. this so difficult, is that in the moment, a lot of us want to be doing these things. We don't want It's a difficult problem. read your book are going to go you know what adam makes a good point i am uh i'm gonna cut back i'm three or four years, everyone wants a solution. And you're right. There are going to be a lot of

46:00 But the solutions that I'll share or the suggestions that I'll share, they're incredibly podcast. Because while I'm talking to people like you for hours, there's no phone. There's no one of the most common they enjoy it. And so, you know, one of the pieces of hope is that, you know, if with other people, they recognize that benefit, they enjoy it. We spend on average, the average American adult spends four or more hours a day on a cell phone screen.

49:13 There were two. Yeah, I mean, he's the one I'm thinking about now. played with some other players, shrank and he ended up flunking out of And he was unrecognizable by the end of it. He got over it, recognized that there was a giant issue, and then the lure of it drew him right back to the computer. people and being self-sufficient and not just being stuck in front of the game. They expose

52:39 I'm not going to play World of Warcraft. treatment, instead of going back to college, he actually stayed out there. He lives and where you get obsessed at trying to get good at things that will help your survival, I'm done. You open up a loop for me and you don't tie the loop off. I hate it. Don't tell me I can't give up on this experience till it's done

56:34 I'm not extremely fast. Um, I don't run insane distances, but, but I find ultra running absolutely fascinating. And I find, um, elite marathon running fascinating. There's, there's high sugar, high salt, high fat, great mix. But give people the situation they're in today, The ultra marathon running thing is particularly interesting to me he started getting obsessed with running marathons then ultra ultra marathons, then these crazy multiple-day endurance races.

58:57 miles no he runs a marathon every day have you seen the sri chinmoy challenge this is this is a i wrote a piece about I can understand running the Moab. That then just kind of exaggerates tenacious that there's something about that that's really compelling and it's hard to ignore yeah But after 26 miles, I was just done. I am never running another marathon.

1:01:51 So I remember being at the starting line and being absolutely famished. It's just not something I have that much time for right now. It was just unpleasant. I think the key is to run a marathon that you just show up, you drive your car to the marathon starting line, you get out and you start running. That's what I need to do next to run this in 329 and i said how can you guarantee that he was like well i can run at 216 i should be

1:04:09 So I ended up just finding some hidden store of energy calculates points based on how many minutes you're at 80 or above max heart rate and and we were And I'll say to myself, you are going to run slowly. you're like, I'm not going to pay attention to it. It ends up being the case that you strap or whatever's pulling you in that's making you do all these extra miles

1:07:22 No, no, I was just saying, So I think on balance, these devices, if they're getting people off the couch and inspiring more activity, they're great. doesn't happen very often. But that's my body saying, hey, you've got a lot of energy pent up, traits that have been positive for us, evolutionarily speaking, in terms of our And there's no way around that.

1:10:30 But don't you think some people need that though? Because otherwise, oh, the good enough. Oh, Some of us have enough intrinsic joy for exercising and working out. We develop, we kind of cultivate But you could use those same hooks for the good. tools for the good that's one good thing about my the the books app on the iphone it'll give you uh No one's going to walk around with a blank iPhone screen

1:13:23 or helps you connect with a loved one who's far away or whatever. If it's helping you meditate, find incorporate these technologies into your life. new. But God, a lot of what I look at is nonsense. I just, I'll just like, and I was thinking this I'm not getting anything out of that, or you shouldn't be doing whatever it is that you're doing that's not enriching your life.

1:16:11 I find myself on YouTube for hours at a time. is really an excellent one. And it's one that I've thought about a lot. smart people should get together on and figure out. ask the question, just kind of audit or interrogate your use of these devices. And if you come away I think you're nailing it in terms of getting children to be aware of the problems of these

1:19:07 these issues by educating children just simply on how to think and the the positive aspects of we use today is an overhang from, I don't know how many hundreds, or certainly decades, but I'd begin to overcome those biases. And then you put us in a world of echo chambers of whether they're and mathematics and all the other things we teach them, how do we not teach them that? Critical

1:22:16 are a little bit easier. We, as a species, like not to expend effort that we don't have to expend It took about 15 months. I spent six months doing a lot of the research. I interviewed about 50 or in delving with these companies. I couldn't get past a lot of the kind of, there are some barriers So that's a big part of it. and that hasn't changed Yeah, one of the practices I found fascinating was the extent to which these companies use massive data sets to make their decisions and huge amounts of data.

1:25:19 That's how a lot of video game development worked. They don't need to know about that. So then you say, okay, we're going to privilege ocean missions. user experience. You end up having features on the platform that are designed to be hard for us to and gain 40 pounds over five weeks because you're trapped in your house responsibility yeah absolutely absolutely i think they do i think i think that the biggest problem

1:28:59 largely, if I made a great product, like when you played, I think you said it was Quake, right? they all talk about the kind of love that went into creating these games. That's gone. This is We're going to penalize you for that. about cigarettes. I mean, fighting tobacco addiction is really difficult, both with smokers reverse engineer what they've done and do it the opposite way like it going towards the ocean

1:32:08 we should make a shittier version of the product. you know, a lot of industries work that way. It just so happens that the model we chose for, than features designed to hook us. But I mean, I've been thinking about this for, it's now six you're going to say, oh, I found the solution. no one is going to be able to figure we're fixing the problem or making it better, but none of them is what you're, what you and

1:35:24 Depends on the nature of it. curriculum that's more thoughtful about this, which I know a lot of private schools are starting to never known anything different. I don't think you are, though. And when I said that I think that one day we're going to be obsolete, that's my real concern. long-term you know the long-term survival of humanity for that and that's that's where we are

1:38:54 I mean, it's as absurd as what's actually going on in the world right now. paints a particularly disturbing portrait of young girls that show this psychologically damaging aspect of these devices and social media. depression rates, anxiety, and even rising suicide. I know you, I think you have a daughter, And to get them they see the ocean and they see a little beach and they see trees and they climb on logs and all

1:42:21 I grew up without the Internet. well, this is where I made mistakes, But the other side of this is, I think, the much more human side, learning how to be parents and learning how to help kids grow up in this world that's become I'm going to be thinking about it all the time. There's no way around that. And I'll probably really have much of a screen on it. It just vibrates when it's time for me to wake up. So when I'm in bed, I have absolutely no screens

1:45:55 that are important to some people. have a reminder go off in a calendar that says it's time to switch my apps and the whole experience it's still a utility like the best things about these phones are Really? book Drunk Tank Pink. And people always used to say to me, does that affect work on you? about the colors like there's a bright red you'll see a cherry and it's red and you'll see grass and

1:48:52 And so they took me to an optometrist. you can say, I don't want to do these things, I'm colorblind. These tests are brilliant because if Really? If you pull one up that the contrast and the colors are correct, And I got to the end of it and the guy was like, you've seen all the numbers that colorblind people see. But then 50% of her sons, if she has sons, will be colourblind.

1:51:37 I was a grad student for years. So I'd show up at class every day, every single day in a pink shirt, Like we have a weird thing with pink. person it had no gender association yeah what happened i mean there's i don't know no one seems Gold and black or blue and – like what were the colors? I just saw, I think it was black and maybe gold. The way I see most other colors is kind of washed out, and I don't have a good sense of it.

1:55:12 you get a different kind of colorblindness. other similar colors. And somehow blue kind of escaped for me. So my ability to see blue is they were really pushing this idea of like realistic, rich, bright, vibrant colors. You'll get some oranges and reds and greens and browns. I think they're called Enchroma, E-N-C-H-R-O-M-A. seeing the world right now i'm seeing it right now a guy doing it there you go i mean it's it's

1:59:15 That's right. That is one of the upsides. And I really do feel that. I mean, I don't enjoy when there's an attempt to sort of improve or fix something for me, it makes two colors that but my brain thinks i am we're looking at this screen right now uh of this video game is this Red's usually the best way to do it. So if I, if I look through red cellophane,

2:01:26 Wow. you seem very happy. thanks for writing the book. really everyone needs to do. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Well,